


Weakness

by infamouslastwords



Series: Poison Arrow [6]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Alexandria Safe-Zone (Walking Dead), Animal Death, Bottom Rick Grimes, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Daryl Dixon-centric, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes Feels, Declarations Of Love, Dirty Talk, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gay Daryl Dixon, Gun Kink, M/M, Mild Gore, POV Daryl Dixon, Past Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Polyamorous Rick Grimes, Porn With Plot, Praise Kink, Public Blow Jobs, Scent Kink, Season/Series 05, Shameless Smut, Sharing Weapons, Smoking, Top Daryl Dixon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:53:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infamouslastwords/pseuds/infamouslastwords
Summary: “Rick’s not himself lately,” Carol admits. Her voice floats to him across the kitchen. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”Daryl stops, standing at the far edge of the kitchen, hand on the doorknob of the back door.“You and I, we can assimilate it into ourselves… take it at face value. But he’s holding on to it all, even though every part of him is desperate to let go. Let go and just be here in this.” She waves her hand. “This fantasy.”Daryl studies the floor, unable to meet Carol’s eyes or acknowledge that truth. Eventually, he hears Carol shift around in her chair, turn her back on him.“That’s what love can do, y’know,” she says, almost as an afterthought.Angsty domestic Rickyl fluff in Alexandria, S05E12 ~ S06E09.
Relationships: Aaron & Daryl Dixon, Daryl Dixon & Carol Peletier, Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Series: Poison Arrow [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2031406
Comments: 14
Kudos: 40





	1. Civilization

The white possum’s guts are cold and slimy as Daryl reaches in, slops them out against the polished, pale green veneer of the front porch steps. The color’s clean existence antagonizes him in a subtle way, a way he doesn’t want to admit, so he’s okay with the fact that the black-red animal blood drips, smears, soaks in, stains. The front porch. He dares: Their front porch.

Rick eyes him from over Judith’s towhead, no judgement in the gaze. Daryl knows that he is halfway not there, anyway, sizing up anything and everything his mind and eyes lob his way. Daryl knows he’s watching so the others don’t have to.

Even so, Daryl can’t help but look up once more: it’s strange, Rick’s face bare like that. Rick’s skin clean like that. Daryl doesn’t know what to do with it all just yet, so he separates the animal’s muscle from the hide as he has a hundred times before, chucks the offal into the manicured bush below.

Home, sweet home.

Daryl found himself listless as Rick was called into the congresswoman’s home, watching those slim shoulders sidle sideways past the baby blue door, shutting behind. He did not like it—this separation. The last time Rick was made to leave from him by someone of another group, they ended up zip-tied and gagged. It is fear that drives him—fear of losing the other man, like always. Yet, different, now. Ever since Daryl thought Rick was dead after the prison, something desperate edges the need to know if Rick is okay, secure. He isn’t quite sure what it is—this feeling one he hasn’t felt, before.

Beyond this, Daryl can’t stop thinking about his own meeting with Deanna, the video interview. When he came back from it, Rick had showered, shaved, had a haircut—was a completely new person. The shock of these two things back-to-back lingers in him, and he recalls it, now. The woman’s well-stocked living room, full of things like books that would never fit into a messenger bag, into the trunk of a car. Would look strange lying next to the stocks of automatic weapons—out of place.

“You’re welcome to sit, Daryl. I won’t bite.”

He lets the campaign pinback buttons in his fingers fall back to their plate, adjusting his grip on the possum’s tail.

“Yeah—I’m alright.”

Stalking around the room, Daryl looks at the fireplace and the mantel, the straight, well-constructed shaft the chimney makes up into the high ceiling of the room.

“Daryl… do you want to be here?” Deanna asks, incisive.

“The boy and the baby,” Daryl responds. “They deserve a roof.”

“And what do you deserve?”

The question silently stuns him, coming from a stranger. But the small woman’s eyes are hard, and he sees that she takes no shit. His gaze flicks to the camcorder set up behind her, and he stops his stalking.

“You gonna do this with everyone?”

“Yes,” she responds, adjusting the seam in her slacks. “I’ve only gotten to Rick, so far, but. That’s the plan.”

“You—plan a lot, here? Seems like you mi’,” he says this with a hint of condescension in the tone, still not sitting down. He begins to pace again, this time bringing himself to the edge of the video’s frame to pull back the gauze-white curtain covering the leftmost window. He takes a moment to observe who may be walking by, but the street is not highly visible from the angle. Just the edge of another house, monstrous in its proportions.

“We do plan. It’s necessary to be able to support so many people within the community, and necessary for the future,” she continues. “Necessary to be able to bring people back.”

Daryl is cautious of the way she talks—each word weighted, special, but at the same time air-light. She talks how some people fight, everything an angle, waiting, building into a counter so sharp and fast that the opponent never has a chance to see it coming.

He looks hesitantly back at her, and that is when he notices the soiled handprint left on the molding of the window. It is Rick’s hand, he knows. He traces its outline before allowing his fingers to fall, self-conscious.

“Have you been with the group for long?”

“Mm-hmm,” Daryl confirms, moving along to study the spines of the many poorly shelved books among other hobby detritus.

“And how long have you known Rick Grimes?”

Daryl pulls out one called _The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter_ , mostly because it has the word hunter in the title. He sees that it is a novel, and that the author’s picture takes up the full front of the cover. She is young, and in her full-cheeked face a familiar feeling hangs.

“Since the start. Mind if I borrow this?”

Deanna’s eyebrow peaks, obviously not expecting him to want a book. She proffers her hand between them anyway, making a gracious gesture of allowance.

“When was _the start_ , exactly, Daryl?”

“The start,” he shrugs. “Few months after it all. Was out by the quarry with them and my brother Merle, when Glenn came back from Atlanta with Rick.”

Deanna sits for a moment as he drops the possum to the floor and flips through the pages of the novel, leaning the side of his thigh against the back of the chair.

“Rick didn’t talk much about you all in the beginning,” she starts. “What were the group dynamics back then, in your experience?”

Daryl sighs through his nose, turning a page. “This guy Shane—he was the one sort of leadin’, before Rick. It wasn’t—wasn’t nothin’ like it is, now.”

“What do you mean?”

Daryl raises his eyes from the page, training them on the older woman. “Mean we were just existin’. Mean it wasn’t a family like it is, now.”

She is grasping her hands together, leaned forward in her chair. “And Rick did that—Made it a family?”

Daryl nods.

Deanna opens her mouth hesitantly, looking down, then sets her jaw. She returns her gaze to Daryl’s.

“Where’s your brother, Daryl?”

Daryl shuts the book, stuffing it under his arm. He bends to pick up the possum again, continue his gait around the room.

“Turned.”

He lights upon the piano in the corner, moves around it to open the heavy wooden lid covering the keys. He presses into a few with his free hand, and they sound poignantly into the air, hanging heavy.

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Daryl doesn’t respond. He plays a few more notes in the pervasive silence that falls between them, trying to recall what Beth had taught him that day, so long ago, at the funeral home. After a few unsuccessful attempts he closes the cover respectfully, sadly.

“You really don’t want to be here, do you?”

“No.”

“Then why stay?” Deanna asks plainly. “You look like you can take care of yourself. What’s keeping you here in front of my camera, when it’s clear you’d rather be anywhere else?”

Daryl sets his mouth. “Forgiveness.”

Deanna’s brow knits, and it is the first time he has seem something pierce her well-mannered armor. Seen something stump her, trip her up.

Eventually, he raises the possum in his hand. “You got a place I can skin this, in here?”

Deanna makes a noise of bemused confusion, shaking her head. “Thank you, Daryl, for your time. If you could send someone else from your family my way, I’d appreciate it.”

Daryl just nods, leaving as Deanna moves to turn the camcorder off.

…

The first night in Alexandria, Carl is on Daryl’s right side and Judith is in her crib in front of him. He has his knife pulled in case, looking out the window to watch the line of the wall on the close-by horizon as the sun sets beneath it. All that corrugated metal out there, and inside the home the window is open a crack.

Whose idea was that?

He cannot help but enjoy it, there at his place in the window seat, cannot help but contemplate what subconscious safety they all must feel now that an open window is not a security issue and instead a luxurious thing, a relaxing thing—a normal thing.

Later, sleeping, he starts at Rick’s waking, Rick’s walking into the kitchen. Or had he even been asleep? His whole body immediately on tenterhooks.

In the darkness of the kitchen, the other man is digging into the drawers, pulling forth from it a thick, stainless steel chef’s knife. Daryl cannot blame him: this kind of behavior also manifesting to adjust for relaxation—a normal thing.

Approaching from behind, he makes sure his presence is known before getting within range of Rick’s reach, just in case he startles the other man.

“Rick,” he murmurs, waiting. Rick doesn’t meet his eyes, looking from his peripherals over his shoulder. “They let us keep our knives, man. What’s up?”

Rick sighs, and the motion sets a deep shadow between his shoulder blades. He reluctantly puts the knife back, closing the utensil drawer silently. Then he rubs at the back of his neck, stalking a few hesitant steps away to the window, opening the shades and not yet looking at Daryl.

“I… don’t know.”

Daryl crosses the distance between them, wrapping an arm around Rick’s abdomen and sliding his fingers under the hem of the man’s thin t-shirt. He presses his lips into the side of his neck, the nape, kissing the smooth skin there and breathing in the washed-fresh scent.

“Can’t sleep?”

Rick settles into his embrace, covering Daryl’s knuckles with his own fingers. He shivers as Daryl brushes his thumb into the divot of his navel, kissing the shell of his ear after the words leave his mouth.

“No,” Rick replies. “So, nothing new there. What about you?”

“Did, for a second. Then I knew somethin’ was wrong.”

This makes Rick chuckle. “With me?”

“Yeah,” Daryl hums. He rests his forehead at the crux of Rick’s shoulders, pulling him closer. “Always been able to do that, feel that, y’know.”

“Explains a lot.”

Daryl slides his palm up the expanse of Rick’s skin, holding it fast over the steady, albeit shallow, thrum of his heartbeat. “Does it?”

Rick nods gently. “You and I been synced up since the start.”

As if to prove this, Rick shifts slowly in his arms, slipping a hand over his jaw to bring their mouths together. Daryl returns the kiss, meeting the well of reverence he finds in Rick’s ministrations. Their tongues meet, briefly, sharing wetness and warmth. Then the kiss breaks after a moment, and Rick, still holding his face close, bends to kiss Daryl’s temple above his fine hair.

“This is so fuckin’ weird,” he mutters, and Daryl knows he means being inside a house like this, being in a neighborhood, with other people. Other people who have maybe never seen a knife sheath or holster outside of movies—wouldn’t be able to field strip a nine-millimeter if their lives depended on it. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get used to this.”

Daryl, on the other hand, allows himself to sink into Rick’s warm embrace, closes his eyes to it. He feels the other man’s breaths as they expand and contract his chest, his belly against his own. Standing here in the kitchen he feels a rush of peace like he has not known for a long, long time—maybe, even, for the first time.

“This helps,” Daryl responds, muffled. “I could pass out ri’ here, with you.”

Rick laughs again, quiet. Daryl falls headfirst into the sound of it.

Then Rick is withdrawing, meeting his eyes with a look full of levity, saying, “C’mon. I’ll set up next to you, Judith, and Carl out there.”

Side by side in their respective sleeping bags and blankets, Daryl falls asleep under Rick’s attentive eyes.

…

Daryl finds himself in the corner of the porch in the morning, after breakfast, watching each one of their family members stride down the stairs past the mowed lawn, and out onto the swept, paved street.

Rick is the last to go. Daryl is sitting there on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest in the shade, and Rick’s watching them all leave the nest, saying something about exploring.

“I’m good here,” Daryl admits.

Rick nods, hands on his hips. There is silence before he says, hesitantly, “Lori and me, we used to drive through neighborhoods like this, thinking, _One day…_.”

Daryl mulls this over mutely, then shrugs. “Well, here we are.”

Rick doesn’t seem to have much to say to that. With the heat of the day encroaching, it makes Daryl want to respond, _Then why not let yourself have it now? For however long we’re here._

But he doesn’t. And then, Rick is gone.

…

On the second night, Daryl starts again at the sound of the front door creaking softly, ever so softly, then closing near midnight. He sits up in his blankets by Judith’s crib, a hand instinctually raising to the mesh of its side, and watches Rick’s familiar shadow cross the curtains over the window as he walks out across the porch and down the steps to the street. Daryl uneasily settles himself, leans back against his palms with elbows locked.

From across the room, Carol catches his eyes. Still half inside her sleeping bag, she motions toward the kitchen.

“A bottle, just for us,” she whispers when he meets her around what he had heard people call _the breakfast nook_ in the far corner of the kitchen, her wiry arm wrestling with a cork. It pops out with a loud sound and Daryl gives her a look as she grins. “What? They wouldn’t have heard that, this far away. This place is like a castle.”

“Okay, well, little ass-kicker wakes up—it’s your fault.”

Daryl sits down awkwardly at the bistro table on a tallish metal chair, a striped cushion under his ass, as Carol pours him a glass of whatever liquid is in the bottle. He places most of his weight wearily on his elbows, on the surface of the table, and waits for his friend to join him with her own glass.

“Cheers,” Carol murmurs, and they clink their glasses. He swishes the red liquid around in his mouth before swallowing it, an act that receives a pointed look from Carol.

“You’re supposed to sip.”

He shrugs. “I did.”

Her mouth is pulled into a smile as she shakes her head, brings her glass once more to her lips, blue eyes glittering as they regard him over it.

“What?” he challenges, uncomfortable at such close inspection. He shifts his vest around his shoulders, leaning back in his chair before taking another swig.

“I want to know what you think about it.” _Alexandria_. “We haven’t really talked, just you and I.”

Daryl shrugs again. “We all needed to see it, I think.”

Carol nods, and Daryl can tell her gears are turning even as she savors the wine that has passed her lips. “We needed it, full stop,” she agrees.

“Hmm.”

Carol’s gaze deepens. “You don’t think so?”

“I think—” Daryl sighs. “I think it’ll be nice to have food and water. Shelter, for a week’s solid sleep and a safe place for Judith and Carl, obviously. But, for me, well—it ain’t for me. All this.”

“And you think it’s for me?”

Daryl looks at her for a long moment. “No. I guess not.”

“It’s a means to an end, Daryl. I know you’re loyal and honest, and that’s beautiful, but think bigger, here. Rick’s always wanted a place for us, a place where we can stop running for a while. I’m not saying it’s perfect—far from it. But isn’t all this better than all the rest of it? Its potential?”

Daryl does not respond, gone contemplative and quiet. They sit in silence like this for a moment, Daryl watching as Carol eventually holds her glass up, admiring as the moonlight coming through the blinds tinges the burgundy of the wine with a deep midnight blue.

“To civilization,” she says ironically, then ceremoniously drains her glass. Daryl scoffs, reaching for the bottle to refill her cup, and adding more to his own as well.

“So… speaking of Rick,” Carol starts. “Saw him leave, earlier. Seems like he hasn’t been around much at night.” The claim is innocent enough, but Daryl knows there is a trap underneath. He is, not for the first time, glad that Carol is his close friend and not his enemy.

“Yeah?” he tries to reply, nonchalant. “Haven’t noticed.”

“Except you notice everything, Daryl Dixon,” she replies, voice hard. Her face is set, and Daryl knows that she is expecting an answer.

“Fine,” he assents, clearing his throat more loudly than necessary. “So, you heard us, at the barn, then.”

“I don’t know what I heard.”

“Whatever,” he replies, still under her unrelenting gaze. “Well, we have been… For a while, now. Okay?”

Her shrug is easy, and she averts her eyes tastefully. “We don’t have to talk about it. I just thought you might want to, considering and all.”

Daryl shifts uneasily in his seat. He is incredibly uncomfortable under this scrutiny—unused to having someone who would listen to him talk about his love interests. He has only ever had Merle and his off-hand comments of _faggot_ , his looks of disgust.

“Why’d they make these chairs so damn high?” Daryl asks rhetorically, still shifting. “Just make a normal goddamn table.”

Carol snorts out a suppressed laugh, waving her hand dismissively. “Forget it. I’ve never seen you this shy before.”

“Shy?” Daryl balks. “That’s not true.” He takes another dreg into his mouth. “It’s just mine, is all,” he continues, voice soft. “It’s ours, I mean. Me and Rick’s. Y’know?”

Carol blinks and slowly nods. “I do.” She pauses thoughtfully. “You happy?”

His face is serious, eyes bright. Carol sees the answer in this expression, the moment settling between them, then smirks as something comes to her mind.

“What?”

“No, just—that congresswoman. She said she’s still trying to _figure you out_.” Carol chuckles as she brings her cup up to her lips. “Good luck, lady.”

Daryl playfully kicks at her shin under the table and she moves away from his foot deftly, still smiling.

“Like you’re any better.”

“I may not be… but I do have a plan,” she tells him.

“Whatever that means.”

“It means there’s just punch-clocks and casseroles from here on out,” she responds, draining her second glass. “Only until I’m invisible again.”

Daryl throws his own glass back and stands. “Great. Sounds like a good plan, Carol.”

She laughs lightly, reaching for what is left of the bottle as he walks away.

“Going to look for Rick?” she asks. He throws his gaze over his shoulder and she meets it out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s okay,” she says. “Someone should be.”

“…Yeah.”

“He’s not himself lately,” Carol admits. Her voice floats to him across the kitchen. “I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Daryl stops, standing at the far edge of the kitchen, hand on the doorknob of the back door.

“You and I, we can assimilate it into ourselves… take it at face value. But he’s holding on to it all, even though every part of him is desperate to let go. Let go and just be here in this.” She waves her hand. “This fantasy.”

Daryl studies the floor, unable to meet Carol’s eyes or acknowledge that truth. Eventually, he hears Carol shift around in her chair, turn her back on him.

“That’s what love can do, y’know,” she says, almost as an afterthought. She brings her glass to her lips again as Daryl slips soundlessly out the door.

The night air is cool, almost wet, on the skin of his face and neck. He hops off the porch and follows the walk to the street, shrugging his shoulders up around his ears and loosening up. He had not realized how high his shoulders raised, speaking to Carol about Rick. The conversation did not go exactly as he had imagined it might, one day, were it to happen. But still he felt love from the woman, her hard-won wisdom, there, underneath his own anxiousness. He hates to admit it to himself, but he _is_ shy, especially at the possibility of his best friend hearing him talk dirty to his boyfr—

Daryl shivers violently, looking into the shadows of each house he passes for a lithe sheriff’s form.

He finds Rick by the edge of the man-made lake, half-hidden by the shallow dip of its bank upon which he sits. He lowers himself into the grass next to Rick, meeting the man’s upturned gaze. His features are illuminated in the moonlight, olive skin gone pale and silver bits in his mane made all the more luminous. His eyelashes are an almost otherworldly white.

“Felt like somethin’ was wrong, again?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Daryl bites his thumbnail, leaning forward to collect his knees within the circle of his own arms. Rick is leaning back on his palms, elbows locked. They make good halves of one whole, he thinks, sitting here like this.

The lake is still, and not even a breeze comes to disturb the sapling trees measuring barely eight feet around them, and around the rest of the lake’s perimeter. There is a gazebo in the distance illuminated by a single, solar-powered lamp, but besides that most every window is dark for as far as the eye can see.

Daryl turns to face Rick. If he leaned back their shoulders would touch, and he sees this before flicking his eyes to meet Rick’s shining gaze. Rick bends forward a bit, raising one hand from the grass to card his fingers through the hair at Daryl’s temple. Daryl closes his eyes at the touch, pressing into it, and hears Rick shift in the grass to move toward him, move to kiss the skin of his eyelid.

Then Daryl is descending on the man’s mouth with his own—hot, needy. A whole-body sigh passes through Rick and he opens himself up to Daryl’s ministrations, meeting them as Daryl maneuvers Rick to his back, covering him with his own easy stretch. He forces one of Rick’s wrists above his head and with the other hand Rick reaches up, winding a hand into his hair and fisting it before pulling him away with a ragged breath.

“Out here?” Rick pants, and it takes Daryl a moment to recall that, unlike him, Rick once had neighbors, once had a sense of propriety about these things. He isn’t the barn animal he was the other night, anymore. He is a man among strangers’ opinions once more—a man among strangers’ opinions in suburbia.

“You don’t wanna?” Daryl asks, loosening his grip on Rick’s wrist and waist alike. He thought he had felt Rick’s eagerness meet his thigh but does not want to rely on this visceral reaction Rick has to being manhandled for permission.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Rick starts, thumbing his cheekbone. “We just shouldn’t. There ain’t a good place, nowhere where someone can’t see or hear—Even in the house—”

Daryl sighs. “I know. It’s fuckin’ claustrophobic, isn’t it?”

Rick laughs miserably. “Yeah.” He looks up into Daryl’s eyes, flitting his gaze from left to right.

“I want to,” Rick breathes. “I really do. You’re so beautiful like this, Daryl.”

Daryl inhales sharply. “Can I kiss you, still?”

Rick nods, licking his bottom lip before raising his head up to meet Daryl’s descending mouth. He is still not quite used to it, this—that Rick is here for the taking, keen on each of his movements, for his mouth—eager to touch him, be with him, sidle against his body. Each time the man’s hands grab him close, stroke him like he is something half-delicate, Daryl’s head spins with a dizzying contentment. It is hard to think straight, hard to do anything other than cling to what he is doing to Rick, to continue doing it.

He delves his tongue into Rick’s mouth and tastes him, the afterthought of toothpaste there against his tastebuds. Rick withdraws for a breath, laughing lightly.

“You taste like wine.”

“Carol might’ve stolen a bottle from the pantry.”

Rick exclaims quietly, then sighs. “You two’re just lookin’ for a reason to get in trouble, aren’t you?”

Daryl smirks, pressing the heel of his hand into Rick’s ear, feeling his hair. “Maybe.”

They look at each other like this, in joy, touching. Rick blinks a few times before asking, “Remember all those nights, those mornings at the prison?”

“Yeah.”

“Would you… want somethin’ like that again, here?”

The question is loaded, a bittersweetness sinking into Daryl’s chest. It combines his love for Rick, his desire to be with the man, and his knowledge that he cannot stay here, as it is, for too long. It puts these two sides of him at odds.

But he cannot bring himself to hesitate, to explain this. Because he wants so badly for the latter aspect to not be an issue, he ignores it, responds, “I never stopped wantin’ that, with you.”

Rick’s expression is serious, his eyes deep, and Daryl cannot dampen his desire to take Rick’s mouth once more. He makes good on his words in this way, covering Rick’s body with his own and caressing him, kissing him with spit-slick lips until Rick is groaning quietly from the force of it, the heat.

The ebb and flow of this thing between them is all Daryl wants to feel, sometimes.

They stay out by the lake for a long time, delirious sighs melting into soft murmurs, into gentle fingertips intertwining against one another, and held to chests, hearts.

They stare up at the sky from the bank of the lake, before heading back to the house.

…

Even though Daryl is up early on the third morning, Rick is already gone past the gates. Instead of leaving, he settles down in a corner of the porch and sets to restringing his crossbow with supplies from the armory when Carol walks out in a cardigan and chinos.

“You look ridiculous,” he calls after her. She all but sticks her tongue out at him.

The sun is high—and all Daryl can do is watch as the light line of it creeps closer to him across the boards of the porch, eating his shadowed shelter inch by inch.


	2. Uniform

Holing up once more on the porch, Daryl thinks all he can do is oscillate between the stoop with the book borrowed from Deanna and waiting at the close-by gate into Alexandria, lifting his eyes every few minutes in hope that Rick has returned.

But Glenn has got that posh one in the prissy Member’s Only in his face, so Daryl starts from the house, slinging his bow over his shoulder. He picks up the pace as he sees the swing that Glenn deftly dodges, sees the retaliated blow land and knock the posh kid on his face. Right as his friend, the shifty one, launches, Daryl drops his bow and makes contact, taking him to the pavement in a bone-cracking tackle. He grasps his hands tight around this one’s throat and, pinning him, feels the soft flesh give way under his hands.

Then Rick is somehow there, grabbing him from behind, lifting him bodily away from Nicholas, snarling into his ear, “Hey, hey! Let’s not do this now.”

Rick pulls him up, pushes him back despite Daryl’s overwhelming desire to smash this prick’s face into the pavement. Daryl knows bad people—he gets it. So this person, he knows in his bones, has done bad things for him to lash out at Glenn like that.

Daryl backs off, shakes himself off, adjusts his vest around on his shoulders, and stalks a few feet away until Rick shows him his back, until Rick is determined that he isn’t an immediate threat, anymore.

But in his belly, he still feels like a threat, still stalks the man like a lion in cage that has been denied its latest meal. Only Rick’s forearm holds him back, Rick's firm calls of, “Daryl.”

When Deanna offers up the positions of constables, he can’t keep his scorn in.

 _You wanna play at society that bad_? he thinks, shrugging his vest around his shoulders angrily before bending to scoop up his bow from the asphalt. He throws a dirty look over his shoulder, sauntering away but bringing a piece of the altercation with him, a piece of that anger like a thorn in his paw. _That game protects the wrong fuckin’ people._

…

By sunset, Daryl depends on the cool of the night to calm him down. He hangs out on the darkness of the porch as ever, chain-smoking without a light on.

Someone opens the door, and in the golden beam of light spilling out from inside, he sees Rick standing there in uniform.

“We good?” Rick asks him softly as he closes the door.

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees, shifting, taking Rick’s image in. It has only been three days and already, the man is near unrecognizable to him. “So, you a cop again?”

Rick lets out a tight breath, mouth set in a hesitant line. “I’m tryin’ it on for size.”

Daryl looks back down at his cigarette, bites his tongue. It is then that Carol steps out, still in her infernal cardigan.

“We’re staying?” she asks Rick, after a long look at Daryl.

“Think we can start sleeping in our own homes,” Rick replies, nodding. “Settle in.”

Carol’s eyes flash to his. Daryl squints slightly, nods imperceptibly in the affirmative to quell her inquest.

Despite this, she reminds Rick: “If we get comfortable here, let our guard down… this place is gonna make us weak.”

“Carl said that.” Rick looks from Carol to Daryl, then back to Carol. “But it’s not goin’ to happen.” The man walks to the porch railing by Daryl’s left side, looks over it at the surrounding neighborhood. “We won’t get weak,” he continues. “That’s not in us, anymore.”

Daryl sees Carol cross her arms from the corner of his eye, feels the tension in it, feels her disagreement. Daryl knows what he is hiding to remain here, to keep the boat steady, to convince himself—and he hears the selfsame thing in Rick’s words, now, too.

“We’ll make it work,” Rick confirms, platitudes and all. “And if they can’t make it…” He turns, hands still placidly hidden in his uniform jacket’s pockets. “We’ll just take this place.”

Daryl perks up in surprise, removing the cigarette from his lips. Rick meets his gaze and Daryl looks quickly away, brings the cigarette back up to take a long drag. He can’t seem to meet Carol's gaze, either, instead opting for the floor underneath his feet.

In this silence, Rick walks away to start his patrol.

Carol stays out there with him, standing in the heavy sound of the night insects. “He’s got a point,” she starts.

Daryl keeps his solemn muteness, reaching for another cigarette, running it over his inner lip, flicking the flint of his zippo. The flame brings a warmth to his face against the cool of the night.

“We’ll need our guns at the very least, anyway.”

Daryl locks his elbows, leans back heavily against the porch railing. He blows his smoke up toward the sky, toward the pale lights of the stars just starting to come out.

“It can still be something, pookie.” Carol’s small, wiry body leans next to his, and her comforting hand covers his own on the railing. “We can make it into a place where we all belong. Where we’re all safe.”

He nods, slowly, without any emotion or weight in the movement. Brings the cigarette to his lips.

“Here… give me that,” Carol says. He passes the cigarette to her, watches from behind the shadow of his bangs as she takes a drag.

“Let’s talk tomorrow,” Daryl murmurs. “You, Rick, and me. Out there.”

Carol raises an eyebrow. “Yeah. Okay.”

Daryl pauses as she waits, watching him chew his thumb.

“Y’know that, Rick—he’s just gonna sledgehammer his way through these people ‘til he gets what he wants.” He takes the cigarette back from Carol’s offering fingers, notices that she had manicured her nails: cleaned them, cut them neatly. “An’ you’re better at convincin’ them it was their idea all along.”

Carol nods, crossing her arms and giving him a long look. “And what’re you gonna do?”

Daryl drops the butt, grinds it into the porch with the toe of his shoe. “Distract ‘em from you two, I guess. They’ve got it out for me.”

Carol stays quiet, not refuting this. “You are drawing a lot of attention to yourself. These people aren’t used to—how you are, yet.”

He takes a sharp inhale, shrugging. “S’fine. Nothin’ I ain’t felt before.”

Carol knits her brow sympathetically. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothin’,” he says. “I just don’t belong in here.”

Leaving her, Daryl abruptly pushes off the railing, walking back inside to check on Judith.

…

Later that night, the door creaks open and alerts Daryl to Rick’s returned presence. Where he lays in the living room is more spacious, now that half of their family has moved in next door. His hand makes it halfway to Judith’s crib before he lowers it, remembering that Carl is looking after her tonight, and instead he props himself up on an elbow as he watches Rick close the door gently behind him. He has that uniform jacket slung over his shoulder, slim and wiry beneath tan slacks.

Rick senses Daryl’s gaze and meets his eyes. His chin jerks upward, motioning Daryl to the stairs, to the upper floor. Daryl rubs his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair as Rick disappears up there, into the shadows. He honestly cannot be sure if he imagined it all.

With a great, silent yawn, he ascends. On the opposite side of the hallway is the ajar master bedroom door, which he slides open further and slips past. Inside, Rick is shedding each layer of his new clothing by pulling it off his arms, unbuttoning it, yanking it over his head.

“How was it?” Daryl murmurs. “Seen anythin’?”

Rick turns, shaking his shirt out and folds it haphazardly in the air, tossing it against the undisturbed comforter on the bed.

“Nah,” Rick says. “Nothin’ to be seen, really.”

Daryl leans against the wall, crossing his arms against his chest. He watches Rick run his fingers through his own hair, tidy some dirty laundry by throwing it into the hamper. “Y’wanted me?”

Rick laughs gently. He pulls his gun belt off, draping it over the back of the vanity chair. He holds it there thoughtfully, regards it, before beginning to close the distance between them. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “I wanted you.”

Daryl looks up, suddenly awake, at the severe gaze coming from Rick’s eyes. His eyes are still open when the other man meets him, bends slowly, takes his lips in a languid, heated kiss. Daryl raises his hips from the wall, pressing them firmly into the other man’s as the kiss becomes deeper, rougher. Eventually he cannot help but grab Rick by his upper arms, switching their positions, slamming him against the bedroom wall.

“Ah,” Rick exclaims. He licks at Daryl’s lower lip.

“Not yet.” Daryl tries to contain that boldness, forcing Rick’s head back against the wall with his hand at the man’s jaw. With the other arm he reaches for the edge of the door, pushes it so it snaps quietly into its frame. He fixes the lock in place—a cheap, indoor lock that wouldn’t stop anything that really wanted in, but a lock nonetheless. Shifting his attention back to Rick, he slips his palm from that bare jaw to that bare neck, grasping tightly. Rick’s eyes flutter closed.

“Yeah,” Daryl sighs. “Just like that.”

Daryl takes one earlobe into his mouth and sucks, worries it between his front teeth before delving the tip of his tongue into Rick’s ear canal. He kisses it wetly, tightening the grip he has on Rick’s esophagus. The man shudders rapturously against him, so he covers his body with his own and tries to quell it, tries to contain and own the beauty there, keep it for himself.

A rattle of breath escapes Rick’s lips, which Daryl quickly covers with his mouth. For a few seconds everything hangs in the balance, as if on a thread, until Rick’s hands come up to push him away as surely as he had descended.

He can tell Rick is pissed, but that doesn’t deter the man when Daryl reaches out toward his pants’ belt buckle. It is quick work, unclasping it from around those narrow hips, dropping it to the floor. There is still a pool of trust between them despite this violence, despite this unpredictable magnetism.

“Fuck, Daryl,” the other curses. “You’re out for blood tonight, hm?”

He places a foot firmly between Rick’s two, moving his thigh to rub against the swelling heat there. “Yeah. And I don’t know what the fuck you’re playing at,” Daryl growls, pulling Rick’s neck open to the air by yanking on the scruff at the back of his head, “But you better cut it out.”

Rick’s blue eyes are squinted with pain. “Okay,” he hisses, disengaging. “Daryl, talk to me.”

Daryl pushes his cheek roughly into Rick’s neck then pulls away, unable to meet those blue eyes. He stalks into the bedroom, paces in the space at the foot of the bed. The mirror in the corner throws strange light onto his eyes and he sees himself reflected there for a moment before turning away.

“I feel like I’ve gotta fight,” Daryl admits finally, haltingly. “It’s this goddamn place, it ain’t you. I don’t know why it’s you I’m fightin’.” He pauses, trying to settle himself, breathing in deeply until his brain stops swimming in the headiness of suppressed rage. “I was just afraid for so long that this wouldn’t happen—You, me. And now all of this,” he finishes, motioning to Rick’s slacks, going silent.

“It is happening, though,” Rick replies, very matter of fact. “If you want it to.”

Daryl moves back toward the wall, picking up Rick’s wrists and kissing them delicately before pressing them to the vertical surface. Rick leans forward to lave his tongue wetly past Daryl’s lips, and Daryl shivers as he accepts the kiss. Not only accepting it but returning it, move for move, he presses himself firmly against Rick’s growing hardness.

“You still haven’t showered, have you?” Rick asks between breaths. Daryl maneuvers him suddenly in a move that is half shove, half lift. He pushes Rick onto the mattress, so forcefully that the other man’s body bounces two or three times on top of the bleached white comforter before Daryl moves to cover it with his own.

“I haven’t,” Daryl responds. He snakes his hand firmly up the other’s lean torso, dipping the tip of his tongue into the other’s naval, before following closely behind his hand with his lips, brushing Rick’s nipple with the lightest, most teasing touch he can manage.

“Fuck,” Rick sighs. “Let me smell you, you bastard—”

“Fine,” Daryl laughs. “Do what you want.”

Rick effortlessly takes top, pinning Daryl pleasantly to the laundered sheets of the mattress. He can catch a scent of the detergent, clean and probably called something like _summer meadow_ , as Rick descends on him. There are even pillows underneath his head—pillows, plural.

Daryl groans as Rick’s nose seeks his skin, those slender fingers moving quickly to shed his vest, his belt; unzipping his pants, pulling them down his thighs, then untying the thin ropes around his ankles. Once finished with this, Rick takes his own pants from his legs, stepping agilely out of each sheath until he is laid bare for Daryl to see.

Then Rick’s form is standing stark in all its glory at the end of the bed, pulling Daryl’s shoes off once again. He sees a small smirk lift one corner of Rick’s lips.

“Taking it all in, Dixon?”

“Like it’s the first time,” he replies.

Rick covets the skin of Daryl’s ankle, pressing the stubbled plain of his cheek to the bony angles present there. He quickly substitutes his lips, kissing a wet trail up the calf and toward the knee. Rick’s tongue darts out to smooth over all the contours, licking from him salty, dried sweat. Daryl watches him, rapt, eyes flitting to see his cock jump to attention at his own ministrations.

“You taste just like the road,” Rick murmurs, breathing in deeply at Daryl’s inner thigh. “Why do I like that so much?”

Daryl watches the somehow chaste and lewd expression of the other man as he salivates over all these ugly parts of him; takes him in, scratches, scars, dirt and all.

“You miss it,” Daryl says. “Or, you just like what I do to you so much that you don’t mind.”

Rick responds by nibbling gently on the soft skin there, massaging with the flat of his tongue in quick succession. “Both,” he breathes onto his spit, cooling the skin and forcing a shiver through Daryl’s spine.

Daryl brings Rick’s face up to his own, guiding it in the dimness of the bedroom with a single hand. He presses his lips to Rick’s, opening his mouth hotly, wanton, drawing the other deeper. He slides his right hand down the subtle arch of Rick’s back, grasping the soft swell of ass there and squeezing.

The kiss deepens and Daryl finds himself teasing a fingertip around that puckered hole. Lazily, he finds Rick’s cock and rubs his fingertip into the pre-cum pooled in his slit, using this as lubricant as he reaches back to tease Rick’s hole. Rick’s stiffness pressing into his own, Daryl easily inserts his full finger up to the third knuckle on the first go, probing into the heat he finds there.

Rick pules softly into his neck, pushing back against the attentive digit.

“You want that?” Daryl breathes. “That feel good?”

“Ye—s,” Rick replies, the end of the word drawn out into a long hiss as Daryl quickly substitutes one full finger for two. In the pale light from the lone streetlamp, Rick’s handsome gauntness is thrown into high relief with the shadows that play there, too. It is a beautiful sight to behold, that face opening like an apple blossom to pleasure.

Daryl bares his neck to Rick’s nose as it buries itself there, nuzzling into the smell of his own muskiness. Rick starts laving at his neck, still grinding back into Daryl’s hand.

“Another?” he asks. Rick nods against him, sucking wetly at his pulsing jugular. Daryl feels his prick swell with fast blood before accommodating his own offer, guiding a third finger into the contracted warmth of Rick’s hole. He finds that spot there that makes Rick buck into his hand and his lap erratically, not knowing where to seek purchase in order to satisfy the hunger burning unchecked within him.

“Tell me how you want it,” Daryl murmurs. He stretches his fingers apart, curls them mercilessly, reaches up to steady Rick’s erratic thrusts with a guiding hand on his hip. “Let me give it to you, darlin’.”

“Just—” Rick falters, nuzzling his forehead into Daryl’s collarbone, his hands braced on either side of Daryl’s supine body, his elbows bent to allow him as close as possible to the other. “Just keep touchin’ me. Don’t stop touchin’ me,” Rick begs.

Daryl lifts himself up on one hand, pushing back to rest half against the headboard. He cradles Rick close, removing his fingers, pulling the other’s face up by his ears to smooth the hair back that had fallen into his sweat-sheened face.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Daryl murmurs, renting the other’s damp, curled hair with his digits. “Ride me?”

Rick nods eagerly, bringing his fingers to his lips to spit a glob of saliva there. He reaches back to his hole, laves it with the lubricant, then starts to lower himself, propped up on his shins, to maneuver onto Daryl’s arching hardness. Daryl holds his pipe steady, guiding Rick’s hips until his head makes purchase with the hot puckered muscle between Rick’s cheeks. Rick eases him through, taking him incrementally, brow knit in concentration and biting his bottom lip.

Daryl places a hand on Rick’s lower belly and his other on Rick’s left hip. He leads him, helps him in this way, pooling warmth from his palms against Rick’s slick skin. He rubs his thumb absently over Rick’s torso, just below the naval, teasing into the line of dark hair that runs up from the shaft of his straining prick. He throws his head back when Rick slips down to take him whole, letting out a slow hiss of pleasure before tilting his chin down to lock eyes with the other man.

A slow, sexy smile spreads against Rick’s lips.

“Fuckin’ love you like this,” he whispers. Shifting some leverage onto his knees, he begins to rock back and forth in increments, making Daryl lose himself in the pleasure of it for a moment.

“What? Havin’ some control over me? Ridin’ this dick?” Daryl reaches up to cradle the nape of Rick’s neck.

Rick just moans in response, letting Daryl’s steel shaft spear him, and Daryl can see the vibration of the sound knock around the other man’s starkly revealed throat. He bends forward and laves at the olive skin there, in all its textures and movements, holding fast to Rick’s hip as he thrusts upward in a surprise rhythm that makes Rick cry out all the more.

“Shh,” Daryl urges, sloppily covering that mouth with his own. “You’re gonna wake the others.”

Daryl slips their mouths together to quiet Rick down, putting more thrust behind his movements upwards into Rick’s deep heat. That pink hole starts constricting around him, the dick against Rick’s belly twitching and jumping in rhythm to the passion of his plunges.

“Y'wanna flip over for me?”

Rick blinks and swallows, hard, before throwing his thigh off of Daryl and bending both knees. He arches his back, pushing his ass up, that stretched hole bare, as Daryl raises to his own knees and positions himself behind the other man.

“Careful,” Daryl whispers, using his hand to shield Rick’s head from hitting the headboard. He hooks his hands over Rick’s hipbones and pulls his tanned hips back toward him, toward the end of the mattress, his straining cock brushing lightly against the dark skin of Rick’s haunches. He spits thickly into his palm, running the liquid over the head of his cock, before pressing back into Rick with ease. Daryl shudders in tandem with the other man as he starts to pump shallowly into his hole. Rick’s fist bunches a handful of clean white bedsheets, pulling.

“I missed this,” Daryl says. “I missed you.” He bends and rests his forehead against Rick’s spine, slipping deeper into the other man with a light moan. Rick is breathing heavy beneath him, trying hard not to let loose the loud sounds trembling in his throat in case the others hear, Daryl knows. The house is large, and the walls are not thin, but down the hall and at the base of the staircase, half of their family members sleep.

“You feel so fuckin’ good, Rick.”

He takes his time with it, allowing his hips to move in slow, tight circles into Rick’s warm depth. Rick’s thighs tremble with the torturous pleasure of it, the soft pants escaping his lips muffled by the pillows, the comforter, the trappings of civility and domesticity. Of normalcy.

Resetting his knees against the mattress, Daryl makes their movements unsteady for a frozen moment, but the novelty of the angle forces a shiver of surprise through Rick’s body. Daryl collects the other man’s waist in the crook of his elbow, bringing the body even closer to own before plunging piston-like into that hungry hole.

“I’m so fuckin’ close,” Rick breathes, daring, snaking an arm down his torso to grip himself firmly. Daryl fills him to the hilt, slowing drastically, withdrawing purposefully, inch by agonizing inch.

“Just hold on a little longer,” he instructs, his head popping audibly out of Rick’s hole. He backs up, lowering himself, seating himself on the floor, sitting on his feet. Rick flips onto the side of his own thigh, looking to see where Daryl’s warmth has escaped to.

“C’mere,” Daryl insists, raising both arms toward Rick’s reclined form.

Rick slides himself to the edge of the bed, placing a foot on either side of Daryl’s folded thighs and taking the two hand Daryl offers with his own. Daryl looks up at the other man, eyes lidded, before pulling Rick down onto his lap. He wets his head with spit again before slipping back inside Rick’s aching hole and pushing the length of himself inside, right up to the hilt.

Rick cries out with abandon. Daryl laughs quietly and puts his palm over Rick’s mouth before pulsing into that ass, before digging deep and trying to reach up into the spot where he can torment Rick with only a touch. He slicks his palm with spit, letting Rick buck as much as he likes, while he handles the other man’s piece with a practiced and skilled hand.

Observing the other’s ecstasy is almost enough to bring Daryl over the edge.

“I don’t wanna stop,” Rick keens, burying his face deeply in Daryl’s neck as he moves erratically up and down the other’s length. “Not yet,” he cries, breath uneven.

“It’s okay—Let yourself,” Daryl purrs into Rick’s ear. “Let yourself feel good on me, darlin’.”

He wraps his arms fully around Rick’s abdomen before pushing the other onto his lap, holding the other man impossibly close to him. He can almost not help crying out from the satisfaction of it, but sobers himself to hold out as long as he can, for Rick to reach orgasm before he does. He pushes deeper, delves his cock into the tightness of Rick, now constricting and impossibly tensed around his girth.

“Daryl,” Rick whimpers into his neck. “Fuck—” and something is more desperate than usual behind the expletive, behind the wanton words. There is something earnest there, and raw, and vulnerable. “Fuck, Daryl. I love you,” Rick cries.

He knows Rick’s body well enough to know that the other man is seconds away from climax. He tries not to hear the words, but cannot stop his eager mind from digging into them the same way his actual fingers dig into the flesh of Rick’s hips are he pulls the other onto him, as he holds the other in place while thrusting rhythmically into that hole.

“I love you,” Rick repeats, his whole body shaking with pre-release, now. It’s as if the world has stopped moving outside of this room, beyond Rick’s face knit with pleasure and his voice saying those words. Daryl steals forward without thinking, closing the distance and sealing their lips into a deep, messy kiss.

Rick moans into his mouth, a desperate sound. He is chasing the lightning that send tendrils through both their sweating, sweetly exhausted bodies. Rick’s hands wind into his hair tightly and Rick bends to meet his lips again, suffocating the breath from him—from each other.

“I’m gonna cum,” Rick pants against his mouth. “Daryl—”

And just like that Rick is arching impossibly into him, that hole constricting around his organ, that neck bending back as a long, low moan emits from those heavenly lips. Rick’s seed paints both of their chests in erratic, eager threads.

Daryl bends forward and places a bracing palm against the side of the bed, rocking upward into Rick as the other’s whole body continues to tauten against him with its release. Daryl bites a cry in half, stifling it into silence, hand gripping the edge of the mattress with white knuckles.

Rick’s slick chest is pressed to his, and he can feel the other man’s ardent heartbeat as he cums.

Several horizonless moments pass before either one has faculty enough to stir against the other.

Daryl finds his arms wrapped firmly around Rick’s body. He feels fully languid; he is eager to move them both, and both their heat, onto the vertical plane of the soft mattress.

“Sleep with me?” he asks, a simple enough question. Rick’s head has lulled against his chest, and softly, so softly, nods in agreement. Daryl collects what strength he has left in his gelatin limbs and scoops Rick’s body close to him, lifting him with an almost otherworldly ease to the surface of the mattress, to rest that curl-crowned head onto the pillows that lie, plump, at the base of the headboard.

“Angel,” Daryl breathes, running his palm over Rick’s dark hair, tucking it gently behind the shell of his ear. “I love you, too.” He kisses the other’s lips venerably, lifting to leave a tiny thread of spit connecting their mouths.

Rick’s eyes are closed and the blond lashes flutter sweetly against his cheekbones. He hums deeply, contentedly as Daryl wraps his arm around him, pulls the blankets close and nuzzles his nose into the smell of his skin.

…

By the time Daryl starts into wakefulness, hours could have passed in silence without him knowing. He looks at the door, checking, and it is still closed and locked. He then moves his gaze down to Rick’s body still supine and sweetly asleep against his. The slight curl of the body to seek more purchase with his own touches him in some way, deeply, and he holds his gaze on the other’s face as uncountable minutes pass in the dark, navy blue light of night.

Daryl studies the other’s features—the hooked nose, delicate; the blond lashes, fanned pristinely against stark cheekbones; the shadow of stubble peppering the jaw, the upper lip; the lips, palely pink and parted slightly to allow for the shallow breaths of sleep to sustain life.

Daryl expels a breath of exhaustion, shallow and comforting, before sinking himself deeply into the plush resistance of the blankets around them both. Rick’s body, and the heat it gives off, is so inviting that he cannot help but push his nose into the musk of it—the hominess of it. Outside the window a few birds begin to call to the sun, their short songs reaching the very first rays of blue morning light.

Sighing sleepily, Daryl brushes a strand of Rick’s hair off the other’s dark brow and resists the urge to lower his mouth to take that parted pout in his lips. Instead, he sucks gently at Rick’s exposed neck, laves lightly at the jumping vein of his jugular before withdrawing to watch for any signs of consciousness.

Rick sighs softly, but stays firmly mired in the sands of sleep. Daryl pulls the sheets back to expose more of Rick’s torso to the scant light, to his own gaze. He lowers his mouth with a practiced measure, kissing a wet line between Rick’s pecs and toward his naval—savoring him the whole way down.

Once at the other man’s lower belly, Daryl pulls the blankets back over his head. He is completely cocooned in the dark warmth of the sheets, the only dankly illuminated plane being Rick’s body, naked and prone, in front of him.

He studies every slight curve, from hip to ribcage, before his eyes settle on the twitching, half-hard cock arching out of its pilose nest.

Almost without realizing it, Daryl licks his lips. Then he descends, curled up, placing his hot mouth to ghost over Rick’s length. He takes the head in whole, quickly, softly, and sucks sublimely before releasing it with a quiet smack from his lips. The small tremor that runs through Rick spurs him on, as well the desire to treat the other man in this way: to wake him by giving head.

Daryl snakes his hand between those two thighs, wrapping his arm around one to leverage himself against the other’s crotch. He lowers his head again, mouth seeking the saltiness of the pre-cum that has started to pool in the other man’s slit. He tongues the depression there, swirling and sucking, then again moving his mouth completely off the other’s piece to watch all its expectant undulation.

Rick is stirring by the third descent of his lips over that red head, so this time Daryl makes sure he takes the length in its entirety into his mouth and sucks tightly, laving his warm tongue over every vein and spasm. He hears a muffled sound of surprise mixed with the heaviness of lingering sleep, and feels Rick’s fingers reach down to brush his hair. Daryl hums at the soft touch, pulling Rick’s thigh closer and burying the other’s cock in his throat.

He is rewarded with an unabashed moan.

Rick’s hand in his hair grasps steadily closer to his skull, illuminating the fever pitch to which Daryl knows Rick is rising. It has been quick, so quick, to get Rick to this point. Had the other been hard from sleep? From being against him all night? Daryl’s thoughts go to wild corners as he slurps wetly at Rick’s length.

Dipping close to the other’s torso and bringing his mouth back up, he grasps the base of Rick’s cock as he removes his mouth from that salty-sweet head. He tweaks his hand, its grasp around Rick, to keep the same stimulation up even though he uses this time to uncover himself from the blanket cocoon.

Rick helps him with the covers and the duvet, pulling everything aside to half uncover both their bodies. Daryl meets Rick’s blue eyes, still lidded with sleep, before lowering his mouth back down to suck at the other man’s cock.

He watches that beautiful face break into a cry of pleasure.

“I’m so—fuckin’ close—” Rick groans. “Daryl, I’m not fuckin’ kidding—”

But Daryl pays no mind, continuing with the same intensity as he tastes all of Rick’s contours. As he withdraws, preparing to take Rick again, whole, the other man is suddenly spasming into his mouth, his seed spraying. Daryl drinks it, not prepared, but some leaks out onto his cheek.

“Shit,” Daryl laughs, swallowing. He pumps Rick with his palm, a movement which elicits a few more sporadic thrusts, and then Rick’s moan quiets into a gentle rasp.

“Fuck,” Rick breathes, moving his forearm up to cover his eyes, the bridge of his nose. “A-ha,” he pants, laughs, “Fuck.”

Daryl lifts himself up from his belly, moving up toward Rick’s range of vision. He chuckles despite himself, still grappling with the surprise.

Rick’s bright eyes roll, come into focus, hold his face in their gaze.

“You’ve got some of my cum on your face,” Rick murmurs, reaching down the side of the bed for Daryl’s red rag. Daryl shakes his head, simultaneously stopping that limb’s descent to the floor.

“It’s okay,” he assures him, reaching up to collect the seed on a crooked finger. He wraps his tongue around his digit, shifting his eyes to Rick’s wide ones.

“Shit,” Rick proclaims. There are no airs attached to the expletive.

Daryl grins the smallest of grins, carving out a space for himself next to Rick in bed. He lays his head heavily onto the pillows, opening his arm for the other’s naked body to move closer to his heat.

“I thought I was a teenager again, havin’ a wet dream,” Rick murmurs against his neck. “That was… Jesus. You made me cum so fast.”

Daryl laughs, a low gravel in his chest. “I’ll say.”

Rick sighs heavily, sated, against him, then kisses his neck softly, warm breath from his nose panning out against the skin there.

“D’you remember what I said last night?”

“Yeah,” Daryl murmurs, lazily bringing his hand down to rest on Rick’s ass cheek. “I do.”

Rick shakes his head slightly. “I feel like the ground is shifting, for some reason. Or, like if I reach out my hand, I’ll somehow pull down a curtain that falls and… shows reality or somethin’.”

Daryl slips his other hand up Rick’s jaw, takes his lips in a firm kiss.

“The air’s just the air. Ain’t no curtain, ‘cept for the one on that window.”

“Yeah.” Rick nuzzles into his neck, wraps his lissome arms around him tighter as he adjusts his body’s reclined pose under the sheets.

“You shaved,” Daryl murmurs after a minute. “Was so strange to kiss you.”

“Really?” Rick chuckles. “You liked it better the other way?”

Daryl shrugs. “Both ways are fine. Was just different. Your hair, too.”

“What about it?”

“It’s shorter. Less to grab onto.”

Rick laughs. “You’re the only one who doesn’t seem to like it.”

“I never said _that_ ,” Daryl counters. He lets a slow smile spread across his lips.

“You can’t just pay a normal compliment, can you?” Rick jokes.

“Hmm,” Daryl hums. “You’d like it too much if I did.”

“Would I?” Rick teases. But something sad settles into that brow, and Daryl notices it.

“You felt like you had to change,” Daryl states. He reaches to place a warm palm on Rick’s forearm.

“Maybe. I don’t know what it was.”

“But it was somethin’.”

Rick looks up at him. “Yeah,” he says.

“Tell me.”

Rick is obviously mulling something over. The sounds of the birds outside the window increase, those songs carrying in past the glass panes to become part of the air inside the bedroom, now. Daryl looks into the right corner of the room from where he and Rick lay, sees just the edge of the bed reflected in that standing mirror. He moves his toe under the sheets—can see his toe move in the reflection.

“I saw somethin’,” Rick starts. “Not like that, but—” He pauses, and Daryl presses his lips to the top of his head, waits.

“When we were here that first night, that’s when I did it. I took a shower and, I didn’t know how to process it. The steam in there. And then, that mirror. My eyes.” Rick stops, fidgets underneath the blankets, against Daryl’s firm side.

“I didn’t know how to change what I saw in my own eyes, so I changed my face. It happened because of that damn bathroom mirror—that’s what it was. That mirror.

“It was so easy to remember when I’d take a shower twice a day, as if nothing could ever break that cycle—There was a time that I got bored by that cycle, felt antagonized by that cycle,” he admits. “I—I didn’t appreciate it. And beyond that, I now didn’t know how to handle it being normal again. Being a thing I could do again. So I stopped looking at my eyes and started in with the scissors, the razor.”

Daryl doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think any reply he could give would encompass the silence the passes now, thumb absently brushing against Rick’s forearm. There is too much to say in response to it.

Rick chuckles, but the sound is strange. “Too dramatic?” he tries.

Daryl shakes his head in the negative. “No. Not at all.”

Rick’s hand reaches up to slide across his jaw, pull his face close.

“Hey. I’m sorry we didn’t do this sooner. Sorry I didn’t tell you, sooner.”

Daryl meets the gaze and feels his eyes go soft. “Yeah,” he admits. “Me too.”

Rick takes his mouth and Daryl secures the other’s wrist, hand still against his face, slipping closer to the rhythm of the kiss. He forgets to breathe for a moment, pressing deeply into the other man’s ministrations, feeling as though his head was submerged, swimming. He finally breaks away, manages to push his forehead to Rick’s before withdrawing.

“I wanna, Rick, real bad, but we shouldn’t—Sun’s almost up.”

Rick’s lips again seek purchase with his own, so he assents quietly, softly. Rick’s hand snakes down between their bodies, tugs at his half-hard cock, encircles it so it strains against his palm. Daryl moans into Rick’s mouth before pulling himself away once more.

“Rick—” he warns. “Save it for tonight.”

“Okay,” Rick agrees with a groan, letting go. “Damn it, Daryl.”

Daryl stands from the mattress and, momentarily unsteady, starts to collect his clothes. Rick lets his head fall back against the headboard, neck arching up into the air and expression vexed.

“You should get up,” Daryl tells him. “The others’ll be soon, and you gotta take Carol shootin’.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Go to the armory. Tell them that you’re takin’ Carol shootin’.” Daryl is halfway dressed now, sitting on the edge of the bed to bend, pull his shoes on. “Meet me by that trash house with that barn—garage—thing. We’re all three gonna talk. Plan. Whatever.”

He grabs his vest off the floor then paces back over to Rick, reaches down to brush the jaw of that face looking up at him with his thumb. He bends reverently to place another kiss against the man’s lips, slipping his tongue against the tongue that formed the words the night before, trying to see if he can taste them like he tastes Rick, savor them in the same way.

When he withdraws Rick’s eyes are soft, his blond lashes catching dawn light.

“See you,” Rick murmurs. He is smiling.

“Later.”


	3. Leaden

The heat of the day hasn’t reached the forest yet, this small clearing filled with ransacked debris in which they all three stand. Daryl bites his thumbnail, walking back from behind the property.

“It’s close,” he tells the others. “But I can’t see it.”

The meeting takes five minutes, if that. By the end of it, Carol’s gun is smoking in the direction of a felled walker. They get close to the corpse, its face half strawberry-mash with viscera, and notice the letter W carved onto its forehead. Rick looks up at him with concern, shifts his gaze to Carol.

“Why don’t you go,” Rick tells her. “It’s important that you get back and unlatch that window as soon as possible.”

Carol nods in agreement and starts making her way back into the forest at the edge of the clearing.

“You gonna be okay alone?” Daryl asks after her, before those roses on her cardigan meld into the surrounding greenery.

She throws a bright look over her shoulder. “Of course,” she replies. “I’ve got another clip.” Then she’s gone.

No sooner is Daryl turning around to address Rick, than is Rick’s mouth colliding hotly against his. Daryl makes a sound of surprise, bringing his hands up to the other man’s shoulders, neck, cheeks. Rick’s fingers find their way under the tail of his shirt, tease at his waistband and lower back, before sliding under his belt to squeeze his ass cheek tight.

“You really wanna do this out here?” Daryl growls, half-laughing at the other man’s frenzy to touch him.

“Not really,” comes the gruff reply. “But I do wanna do this. Real bad.”

He hears the clinking of his belt buckle as Rick works at it, feels the pressure of it slide off his hips.

“There ain’t nowhere safe, man,” Daryl counters. Rick’s breath is a fire on his neck, and the other man kisses a wet line down to his chest before dropping to his knees—taking Daryl’s pants with him.

“Then you’re just gonna have to watch for walkers and let me suck your cock.”

“This is the stupidest goddamn idea you’ve ever had,” Daryl bites through a groan, winding his fingers into Rick’s hair as that hot mouth moves up and down the length of him. He braces himself with the other hand against the trunk of the nearby tree, stealing a glance at Rick’s blue eyes looking up at him before scanning the area around them. He bites his lip when Rick’s fingers fondle his sack, trying desperately to focus despite the sweet ache growing between his legs.

“I was gonna do it this morning,” Rick pants, slurping a line along the ridged underside of Daryl’s length, pulling his red head in past tight lips. “But you wouldn’t let me.”

As if punishing him, Rick bites down suddenly on his softish inner thigh and Daryl lets out a yelp. He tries to pull Rick back by his hair but Rick won’t let go, sinking his canines in deeper, and Daryl’s prick arches impossibly against the cool air.

“Fuck you,” Daryl wants to spit when Rick’s mouth finally returns to his piece, but it comes out as a moan despite himself. “You’d chain me to the bed if you could.”

Rick’s laugher is a hum around his cock. The other man pulls him deep into his throat with an obscene suckling sound before moving back up his length.

“Don’t give me ideas,” Rick warns, trying to catch his breath. “Watch!” he urges, before falling back ardently to his ministrations.

Daryl scans the area again, trying to listen for any signs of dead life ambling near. He digs his nails into the bark of the tree he is against, desperately trying not to cry out as Rick’s movements become more urgent. A rustling in the underbrush a few yards away draws his attention, but it’s just a fat brown rabbit hopping peacefully into the next thicket over.

“Gimme your Colt,” he tells Rick anyway, reaching down to pull the other’s face away from his cock. He watches his length slide out of those two wet lips and groans inwardly.

“We have company?” Rick asks, starting to throw his gaze over his shoulder to scan the clearing.

Daryl grabs Rick's jaw, arresting the movement. “No, just give it in case. It’s got more shots than my bow.”

Rick obliges, and Daryl takes a moment to brush the skin around Rick’s mouth with his thumb.

“Such an eager little whore,” he murmurs, pushing the tip of his thumb past those lips. Rick’s eyes flutter close and he tongues at the finger, cheeks hollowing. Like this, Daryl slowly leads Rick’s face back to the crux of his legs, substituting the finger for his cock.

Rick makes it slick with spit, suckling, making sure to lave all the veins that make Daryl feral with desire.

“You better stop soon if you want me to fuck you,” Daryl warns, little tremors forcing his legs to shake where he stands. But Rick doesn’t let up, instead reaching to grasp the base of his cock with his spit-slicked palm and move it up and down in tandem with his mouth.

“Shit,” Daryl hisses, raising his eyes. The underbrush is moving again, in the same spot, and he wonders foggily if there are bunnies coming to follow after their mother. It is a sobering image when instead a walker moves out, locking on to their presence with a snuffling howl.

Daryl pulls back the hammer of Rick’s Python and takes aim. If Rick knows what’s happening, he certainly doesn’t let it affect his movements as Daryl lines up the target and pulls, the bullet felling the walker with ease.

“It’s good to know you can still aim with my mouth around you,” Rick chuckles. Daryl bucks, grasping Rick’s hair.

“Don’t fuckin’ stop. Any more kills and I’ll cum for you.”

Rick smirks. “I knew you’d get off on it.”

He starts up again, moving fully along his length, while Daryl cradles the back of his head close with one hand, raising the gun with the other. That is when he spots two more shuffling out in his righthand peripherals, much closer than the previous one had been. He is twitching inside Rick’s mouth as he tries to aim, squeezing the trigger. But the bullet only glances one’s shoulder, throwing it back but not slowing it down.

“Ah,” he cries out, unsure if it is frustration, fear, or his growing closeness to climax. He tries to steady himself and line up the shot again, the two walkers within four yards of them now. He looses one bullet from the gun, two. One walker falls, pieces of its skull showering the forest floor. Just one of them now, its jaw hanging on by a thread, perambulates closer and closer.

“Dammit,” he moans. Rick is gagging around him, humming in his throat. There is a frenetic movement in his lap and Daryl realizes—Rick is touching himself, jerking himself off to the feeling of Daryl’s hard cock in his mouth. Daryl readjusts the cold handle of the pistol in his grip and knows he is almost there, especially knowing that Rick is bringing himself to a pitched climax.

The walker is so close now, he thinks that it is impossible to miss. He squeezes the trigger. It slumps, crumpled, barely ten feet away.

Daryl drops his gun arm, tightening his hold on Rick’s hair as he bucks erratically into that mouth. Relief and pleasure wash over him simultaneously, overwhelming his senses. He shuts his eyes tight, the back of his head lolling against the trunk of the tree.

“Right there,” Daryl murmurs, entranced. “I’m gonna—” he moans, and a low sound like a sigh escapes him as he fills Rick’s throat thickly with his seed. His prick jumps erratically past Rick’s lips, and he can’t help but thrust up into the warm wetness of the other’s mouth.

Still working at his own cock, Rick takes every drop of his cum, using the finger of one hand to massage the sensitive area at the base of Daryl’s balls. Daryl feels himself spurt once more, weakly, his ears ringing from the power of the release.

Rick swallows and then parts his lips wantonly, the breath from him coming in hitched gasps now. He quickly brings himself to the edge and over it, spilling ribbons of white seed onto the crushed leaves underfoot.

Daryl holds Rick’s forehead close to his thigh as they both catch their breath. When it comes from him after a few moments, Rick’s laugh has a rasping quality, self-assured and lustful.

“Ahhh… Probably shouldn’t have used the Colt,” the he says as he lifts his head from Daryl, wiping his palm against the dirt of the forest floor. He looks up at Daryl and shifts his jeans back over his hips, clicking his belt back into place. “More’ll be on us soon from the noise.”

Daryl hands the pistol back to Rick and re-clothes himself, shooting a wary gaze around their relative area. “Yeah,” he agrees. “C’mon. I’ll walk a bit back toward town with ya.”

“You stayin’ out?” Rick asks as they set off. He shuffles some bullets into his palm, easing them into the chamber as he steals glances at the horizon. Daryl has taken his bow from his back and moved it to his side, arm tensed and ready to raise it at any moment.

“Yeah. Gonna hunt some.”

Rick sighs. “You don’t like it much, huh?”

The neighborhood. Alexandria.

“Not really,” Daryl replies, knowing the question isn’t really a question. “But that’s fine. It ain’t for me.”

“What is it?” Rick asks. “About it all.”

Daryl shrugs. He catches a crow taking flight out of a tree branch and turns, weapon aimed, before lowering it again.

“Dunno. It ain’t for me, and it ain’t me. Can’t really say it any clearer.”

He thinks that Rick will get the hint and back off; he hopes, at least. In the minutes of silence as they continue their pace, there is something welling in him now that he knows will come out eventually—will have to come out eventually, but he’s begging it to not be now.

Just a few more days of waking up with Rick in his arms. A few more before it breaks.

“Did I do somethin’?” Rick asks quietly. Daryl shuts his eyes for a second, tightly, painfully. He swallows. He stays silent.

“Daryl, c’mon. Talk to me.”

They have reached the large oak tree that marks a five-minute hike back to Alexandria’s gate. Rick has stopped walking, looking at Daryl with a hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun, waiting for him to say something. 

Daryl pauses, mulling the words over as he chews the inside of his cheek. He circles the circumference of the oak’s trunk, watching for signs of walkers and giving himself time to even his breath out. His heart beats rapidly in his chest, his palms sweating.

“I want to, Rick. Just—later, okay?”

Rick gives him a long stare, hands on his hips. Then, he nods.

“Alright. Can I tell you somethin’ now, then?”

Daryl blinks, a wet panic raising in his chest. “Yeah. ‘Course.”

Rick approaches him, gently reaching up to pull Daryl’s face toward his own. He kisses the man with his slightly reddened lips, and Daryl melts at the touch. He almost clings to Rick’s shirt collar, sinking into what the man does with his talented mouth—all its sex and love, tangled into one.

“I want you to understand somethin’ about me, Daryl,” Rick starts, withdrawing. “Understand that I—I’m poly.”

“Alright.” Daryl runs his thumb over Rick’s neck. “What’s that mean?”

“Means I can prefer havin’ more than one partner—It can look like a lot of things, and it’d be up to what you’re into, too, but I—just wanted you to know after what we said last night.”

Daryl sits with this, breathing, searching Rick’s face. He bends forward and kisses him once more, touching the corner of his mouth with his index finger.

“Is that what Shane and Lori was about, back at the farm?” Daryl murmurs. Rick nods.

“That’s what it looks like when it goes bad, yeah. When love ends, and communication stops.”

Daryl shrugs lightly. “We ain’t never had trouble communicatin’.”

Rick chuckles warmly at this, the line in the hollow of his cheek deepening.

”Think I knew that, about you, though, Rick. With Michonne before and well, whoever. I never minded.” Daryl runs his fingers up Rick’s wrist, clasps his hand. “Doesn’t change anythin’ between us, does it? So we’re okay.”

There is something in his eyes when Rick brings his eyes up to Daryl’s, something honey-golden and disarming.

“I fuckin’ love you,” Rick says with the softest voice possible, edged by a sliver of deep hunger.

Daryl’s heart flips and he pulls Rick to him roughly, wrapping his arms around the other man’s body and weaving his fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck. This causes Rick laughter to expand, and he holds him tight as that body shakes with joy against his own, hugs back.

But there is something, always, held tightly within the red-meat bounds of him, threatening. The thought of returning, ever, to that community and its closed gates makes him wants to cry out of fear, so he buries his face in Rick’s neck.

He knows his expression is grim as he says goodbye when they part ways—he must convince Rick, again.

“We’ll talk?”

“We’ll talk.”

Then Daryl turns, letting whatever he had been holding together fall apart as he disappears into the woods.

…

A rustling nearby sends Daryl’s body into full alert, grasping the crossbow lethally as he demands, “Show yourself,” into the dense greenery of the forest.

Realizing it is Aaron does not abate the anxiety that adrenaline has shot straight through him. Distrustful now, and wary, he doesn’t exactly lower his weapon.

“You can tell the difference between a human and a walker just by sound?” Aaron asks. Daryl is silent, watching, waiting for a reason. The sight of Rick twining his way through the underbrush, back turned, back to Alexandria, is like a lava spill burning inside his mind.

“Can you tell the difference between a good person and a bad person? Rick doesn’t seem to be an expert at that.”

Daryl snorts derisively, defensively. “There ain’t much of a difference no more.”

Aaron quickly fires back, “Is that how you feel about your people?”

“Why’re you following me?” Daryl snarls, raising his crossbow again.

“I didn’t know I was,” Aaron says lightly, raising his hands. “I came out to hunt rabbits. But I know why you’re out here.”

They share a meaningful look, and Daryl lowers his bow with a slight shake of his head to clear the hair from his eyes.

“Mind if I join you?” Aaron asks.

Turning slightly, Daryl assents with a growl. “Keep up.”

He is moving his feet deftly through the underbrush, bow raised, alert, when he asks, “How much’d you hear, then?” Some of the animus has left his growl.

Aaron raises his eyebrows, his face plain and honest. “Enough to know you and Rick are sleeping together. Never would have clocked it, but it’s always nice to have more of us around. Just been Eric and I for a while, now.”

Daryl squints. “Alright.”

“Don’t worry,” Aaron continues lightly, “I can keep a secret. Well, probably not from Eric, but… It is a secret, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Then, “Kinda.” Daryl stops, lowers his bow a bit and throws a look at the other man. “Carol knows.”

Aaron tilts his chin up. “Ah,” he says. “That makes sense. Behind you,” he adds airily, motioning.

Daryl turns and looses a bolt through the walker’s skull. It squelches on impact, and again as he bends to yank it out of the fetid flesh.

“I can’t figure something out about her. Is she gay?” Aaron asks with genuine curiosity.

Daryl snorts, wiping the bolt across some tallish grass before fitting it back into his bow. “None’a my business, man.”

“Yeah… you don’t really seem like the type who asks people many questions about themselves.”

“What’s that mean?”

Aaron shrugs. “You watch. You listen. Sometimes, you answer questions. But you never make conversation.”

“You’re makin’ enough for the both of us,” Daryl grimaces. “Everyone usually does.”

Aaron chuckles. “That’s fair.”

They continue on for a while, until the trees give way to a field. They stop on the edge of it and Aaron rifles through his pack, producing some jerky and handing half to Daryl.

“It’s homemade. Venison,” he says.

Daryl takes it and yanks off a hunk with his molars. “Thanks.”

They sit back to back, watching for any sign of walkers while resting.

“So…” He hears Aaron take a swig from the water bottle that they are passing back and forth. “Were you ending it?”

“Endin’ what?” Daryl sucks on the end of a piece of grass, stretching his legs out against the ground.

“You and Rick.” He feels Aaron turn toward him a bit. “You looked sad.”

“Yeah, well…” Daryl adjusts the grass between his lips, crossing his arms. “How d’you know that’s not just my face?”

“Because your face usually looks shifty,” Aaron replies. Then, “Sorry. Just saying.”

Daryl doesn’t respond, squinting against the past-noon sun as he grazes the field, the horizon, with his gaze.

“Look, Eric and I… we’ve had our fair share of issues. I’m sure that whatever it was, it’s not enough to put a stop to it all.” Aaron sighs. “If you’re lucky enough to find someone in all this, you should hold on to them for as long as you can. That’s what I think, at least. Or maybe I just watched one too many rom-coms before all this.”

Daryl spits, tossing the chewed grass aside. “Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it.”

“Then, what does have to do with it?”

A dark shadow moves in from the edge of the forest opposite, making great strides on four legs out into the light of the field. Daryl watches it and its graceful movements momentarily paralyze him; the way the wide shadow it casts ripples out against the wind-weaving grasses of the field stretching out between them.

“Weakness,” Daryl says.

…

Aaron stands over the horse’s corpse, expression perplexed. “He always ran,” the other man says sadly.

Daryl stares at the beautiful, lifeless body. He can’t help but recall Rick’s expression as he does, Rick’s dark hair against the white pillows, the shadow of his eyelashes against his sleeping face.

“You were tryin’ to help him,” Daryl notes, realizing he had just as much a part in it as Aaron. Going out there with the rope. It hadn’t been asked of him. What was he thinking?

He was thinking, _You’re wild and I want to own you. Want you to want to be owned by me. Want to take care of you… make you safe… Want to help you._

Daryl gives one last glance at the black beast, and slowly turns back toward Alexandria.

And that’s all the goddamn good help does.

…

He stands outside the illuminated window in his fresh shirt, his fresh skin. He can’t do it. He finally showered, he changed—he knows everyone else will be there. But he still can’t do it.

Rick is inside. Rick and Judith and Carl, and this thing that bites at his heart makes him bite at his thumb, now—makes him push off roughly from the space where he had been deciding.

And it wasn’t just about Rick—was about the inside of that house, how small it all was despite the size of it. How burdensome.

It’s just never, ever been him.

So he pushes off from the tree, bites his thumb absentmindedly as he sways back to the edge of the town, to the empty castle house to wait in bed, reading, maybe, for Rick to return.

“Daryl,” Aaron calls from his own porch, and there is something in his invitation that makes Daryl pause. It is because of this that he follows him inside, meets his boyfriend, eats his spaghetti, drinks his wine.

They’re looking at the bike when Aaron tells him, “You’re good out there, but you don’t belong out there.”

Daryl inspects the handlebars, tries to find what wires, what hardware is missing on the skeleton frame of the bike under its dingy tarp.

“And I know it’s hard getting used to people getting used to you. I understand that right now you need to be out there sometimes,” Aaron continues. “So do I.”

Daryl looks up, chewing the inside of his cheek thoughtfully, remembering how well Aaron could keep up with him in the forest earlier that day. Thinking it isn’t so far-fetched, that he could rely on the man who, against all odds, infiltrated their camp to come convince them not to kill him. To bring them here.

“But the main reason why I want you to help me recruit, is because you do know the difference between a good person and a bad person.”

Daryl doesn’t know what to say. He keeps chewing his cheek, hoping something will come to mind, hoping he can finally make into words what others find so easy to express. That he needs to be out there—needs to have that feeling back before he cannot recognize himself anymore.

“I got nothin’ else to do,” comes the reply. He nods once, firmly. “Thanks.”

Aaron nods back, shrugging slightly. “Yeah.”

Daryl takes another look at the bike before dropping the sheet back around it, letting a small smile cross his lips.

“I’ll gitcha some rabbits,” he promises.

Aaron just laughs.

…

Daryl’s propped against the floor under the window seat, feeding Judith, when Rick opens the front door. He can immediately tell that something about the other man is weighted, off—Had he been drinking?

“I’m early.” Rick slams the door a little too loudly behind him. “Everyone’s still at the party.”

“Are they?” Daryl ventures. He wipes Judith’s mouth carefully with his fingers, getting her clean, before wiping his hands on the red rag hanging out of his back pocket. He lifts Judith onto his shoulder, bouncing her, patting her back.

“Someone dropped her off earlier.” Pausing. “You had some fun, huh?”

Rick leans heavily against the door. “Yeah—uh, well, no. I don’t know.”

Daryl scoffs. “You’re not makin’ any sense, man. How much did’ya drink?”

Rick shakes his head slowly from side to side. “Nah,” he says. “Not here. C’mon upstairs.”

Judith burps once against him as Rick ascends the staircase and disappears from view. Daryl looks into her little face as he sets her down in her crib, covering her legs gently with a clean, satin-edged baby blanket.

“Rick,” Daryl calls up from the stair landing. He shakes his head, unsure of what he is getting into. When he passes under the lintel of the master bedroom he finds Rick sitting there, shoes thrown haphazardly, in something of a stupor.

“Are you drunk, man?” Daryl asks again.

“Was before. Not so much, now,” Rick replies. He stretches over to the nightstand, picks up a dusty water glass, and downs the thing in its entirety. “God, I didn’t mean to drink. Reg—he had bourbon.”

“Who’s Reg?”

Rick doesn’t answer him. “He told me—whatever. He told me it’d be fine.” Rick swallows. “Thank you for taking Judith.”

Daryl shrugs. “It’s okay. You know I don’t mind.”

Rick leans back heavily against his palms, flat on the mattress, after running a hand through his hair. “Yeah,” he says. “I just wasn’t gonna let myself get like this.”

Daryl assents, tries to ease the mood, leaning lightly against the doorframe. “Y’know, Beth and I—one day out there, after the prison, we found all this moonshine,” he admits. “It was her first time drinkin’. She was okay at it, considerin’. And y’know, I’m an old pro. Still, made an ass of myself,” he laughs sadly. “Made an ass of myself, alright.”

“What’d you do?”

“Just—got to talking about you and how I thought you had—you know. Real depressing-type shit. I should’a shut up and let her have fun.”

Rick’s hand comes up to his face. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s alright,” Daryl replies. The silence between them is heavy. “I miss her,” Daryl adds, softly, the thought coming to him through the ether of time.

The kind of stillness specific to suburbia hangs between them, specific to two- or three-bedrooms with two baths and a half, that can fit a family in them. That means the end of something, but also the beginning of something.

Used to mean. Used to.

Rick clears his throat. “You know, I—I think I drank too much there ‘cause I missed you. And I—Well, I kissed Jessie’s cheek.”

He moves his hand unsteadily across the comforter, smoothing it, watching himself smooth it. His wedding band glints in the wan light spilling in from the hallway.

“She was holding Judith and at first I was thinkin’ of Lori—then I was thinkin’ about you, and—Just, I don’t know how to turn it off, Daryl.” Rick’s profile is stark against the darkness of the room, his voice softly frustrated. “I don’t know how to stop wantin’ it. The normalcy.”

Daryl lets a heavy breath from his lungs. “I know, brother. It’s been a hard road.”

Rick just nods, still brushing the comforter absently.

“Look, Rick: You should do what you want, to get back to you,” Daryl tries to say airily, but it feels leaden coming out. “You should do what you can to bring you back to yourself,” he repeats, hoping his words are clear; hoping his feelings are clear. But he cannot sit for long, with it.

Trying not to think about what is eating away at him, Daryl crosses the room swiftly, throwing open the window as far as it will go. He sticks his head out, breathes in deeply the cool night air.

“Can I smoke in here?” he asks Rick. “Just this once?”

Rick lowers his brow, nods. “Just this once,” he agrees.

Some time passes in silence, Daryl supine on the floor with this arm draped out the window, staring at the moldering ember on the tip of his cigarette.

“Gonna be hungover tomorrow?” Daryl asks.

Rick laughs shortly. “Maybe. I don’t think so.”

Daryl bites his inner cheek, mulling over how he wants to break the news. He knows he has to, feels it is the moment to do so, but the motion of getting there makes him a little sick to his stomach.

Finally, he asks, “You remember Aaron?”

“Of course.”

“Yeah,” Daryl fidgets with his cigarette. “Well, he thinks I’d be a good fit for the job he does. Y’know, like, finding people out there and bringin’ ‘em back.” He flicks the ember, brings the filter to his lips. “Means I’d be gone a lot.”

Rick blows out a tense breath from his nose, lowering himself from the bed to sit on the floor. He rests his back against the side of the mattress, rubbing an eye wearily with the heel of his hand.

“And you already agreed, didn’t you?”

Daryl nods in the affirmative. Rick’s leg is stretched out so the foot of it almost reaches him, the foot covered in a clean white cotton sock. Rick sees him staring at it and moves it those few inches closer, until its toes touch the side of Daryl’s thigh.

“I’ll miss you.”

Daryl sucks in another lungful of nicotine. “I know,” he says. “Me too.”

“But you should do what you want, too,” Rick nods. “And, you should give me that cigarette.”

Daryl chuckles, leaning forward on one hand to bring the cigarette closer to Rick’s outstretched fingers. They pass it successfully, and Rick’s eyes take a full measure of him as he wraps his lips around the filter, inhales.

“Aaron… he made a good choice with you, this job.”

“You think so?” Daryl drapes his arm over his bent leg, staring at the grain of the floorboards.

“I do.” Rick takes another drag.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a good man, Daryl.” Rick’s eyes are bright as they lock onto his, as a single fingertip brushes against his own before they secure the cigarette, then withdraw. “Because, for what it’s worth, you’re the only thing outside of Carl and Judith that’s kept me sane some’a these days.”

“I don’t think I did anything,” Daryl responds, taking a drag.

“But you have.” Rick reaches out toward him, and Daryl assumes it is for the cigarette. His face angled down, he begins to raise the filter to the other’s fingers but feels them instead reach past, grasp his wrist, pull him close. He slides easily across the wooden floor and collides with a soft bump against Rick’s lithe legs.

The cigarette drops to the floor.

Rick’s face floats in front of him, shadowed except for those eyes catching light. Daryl doesn’t dare breathe, can only let his eyelids tremble closed as Rick closes the distance and brushes his lips softly, barely, against his own. The kiss lilts for a moment, chaste, warm, and then Rick has withdrawn to touch their foreheads together. And Daryl knows it is the end of something—can feel it in his bones—but knows it is the beginning of something, too.

“I know you’ll survive out there, Daryl, and keep coming back to me,” the other man finally murmurs, and Daryl knows that his cigarette has long since turned to ash. “Because, out of all of us, you’re the one standin’ furthest away from weakness.”

The look they share touches Daryl deeply, and it is then he knows that his walls are completely obliterated by this man touching him, taking care of him, looking at him and truly seeing him.

“Still love me?” Daryl asks, voice hardened by the emotion welling in him, now.

“Think I always have,” Rick replies. “Now, air the room out. I’ll go get Judith.”

Rick brings himself from the floorboards and into the hall, and Daryl sets to moving the door by its handle to clear the cigarette smoke from the room. As he does this his gaze wanders from the hall to the empty bed, to the place where he will be sleeping next to Rick and his child tonight.

Looking up at the ceiling fan, Daryl cannot suppress the flighty despair that sets his heart skittering within his chest, nor the genuine smile that turns the edge of his mouth up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little old, a little new :~) Thanks for reading!


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